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Over the last few years a busy conference circuit has emerged for creators and enthusiasts interested in VR and AR technology, and 2018 is full of events throughout the year.

We’ll update this list of VR and AR-related events from time to time as more dates are announced. If we’ve missed a big one, please email tips@uploadvr.com with information about the conference or event and we’ll periodically update this post.

Unite Berlin // June 19 – 21

Berlin, Germany

Registration: Attendee

San Diego Comic-Con // July 18-22

San Diego, United States

Registration: Exhibitor | Attendee Badges (Sold Out)

SIGGRAPH // August 12-16

Vancouver, Canada

Registration: Attendee

Gamescom // August 21-25

Cologne, Germany

Registration: Exhibitor | Attendee

Oculus Connect 5 // September 26-27

San Jose, United States

Registration: TBD

Unite Los Angeles // October 23 – 25

Los Angeles, United States

Registration: Attendee

XRDC // October 29 – 30

San Francisco, United States

Registration: Attendee

VRX 2018 // Dec. 6-7

San Francisco, United States

Registration: TBD

VR Events In The First Half Of 2018
Mobile World Congress // Feb 26 – March 1

Nintendo’s Game Boy was one of the first all-in-one portable gaming systems in the world, and now you can play its huge line-up of games on one of the first all-in-one portable VR systems in the world.

Reddit user CidVonHighwind has ported Gearboy, a Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator, to the new Oculus Go headset. The app projects a giant virtual screen into a darkened environment where you can play classics like Pokemon Blue (or Red, if you’re on the wrong side of history), Super Mario Land 2, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and much more. The images above from the developer show you how it all looks, though you’ll need to connect a gamepad to your Go in order to play.

You can download the emulator via GitHub and then follow these instructions for sideloading apps onto Oculus Go. Once you’re ready you can load in ROMs and be on your way.

This is a great way to experience some old classics in an entirely new way. In fact, it reminds us a little of the VR NES emulator for Rift/Vive which actually uses an algorithm to turn 2D games into 3D experiences to enjoy in VR.

Also of note: someone in the comments noted that they’re working on a SNES Emulator, too. Super Metroid inside VR, please.

There are lots of VR experiences that take us to Mars, but Red Rover from indie developer Alan Chan is using real-world imagery of the red planet to deliver a surprisingly authentic experience.

Set to release tomorrow with optional Oculus Rift support, Red Rover is a Mars driving simulator. You control a land rover on the surface of the planet, driving across terrain that’s rendered from images from NASA’s HiRISE Mars orbiter. Chan himself has already been using the app for years as a personal project that allowed him to explore Mars, but now he’s bringing it to Steam with a VR mode that brings you even closer to the distant planet.

Red Rover will give you nine areas, each with about 5km x 5km of terrain to drive around in. There’s not much ‘game’ here; you’ll largely be driving around to take in the sights in the knowledge that this is what Mars actually looks like. And it’s not all just barren red desert, with sites including the Becquerel Crater, Western Cerberus and South Olympus.

There are some neat features, though, like a controllable day/night cycle that can make the scenery look pretty dramatic. Your Rover is also fitted with jump jets, Mass Effect style. Chan also hopes to add more maps over time as more datasets are released.

It looks like Sony’s Days of Play sale is having a positive impact on its PlayStation VR (PSVR) headset.

PlayStation VR Worlds, the PSVR launch title from Sony’s London Studio, ranked in fifth place in this week’s UK games software charts from GFK. That means in the space of this week it even managed to outsell titans like Gran Theft Auto V, Mario Kart 8, Assassin’s Creed Origins and Call of Duty: WWII. The game costs only around £10 during Sony’s current promotion, which ends later this week.

There might be a big reason the game has sold so well, though. Copies of PSVR Worlds are bundled inside pretty much every PSVR unit sold in the UK right now, which will have boosted its sales somewhat. That might seem like cheating, though it actually suggests PSVR itself might have moved a healthy number of units over the course of the promotion. The headset’s starter pack also costs about £200 during the event.

Last we heard, PSVR had sold two million units worldwide. That said, we didn’t get an update on sales at E3 last week, which might suggest Sony hasn’t managed to pass the three million mark just yet.

With the industry growing hungry for female influence, women in VR has never been more important. In the early nineties, a TV studio took a risk. Executives were casting for a character named Dana Scully: a supporting role, they envisioned, being played by a woman with the same physical attributes as Pamela Anderson. Despite that